Third times a charm???

I seriously cannot believe Kendall is inpatient for the third time this year already. We have been VERY lucky that they have all been quick stays (well, we hope this one is quick!), and that we have known what we are fighting each time we have been in.

I am tired and need to try to sleep while I finally have Kendall asleep, especially since 6 am lab draws come WAY too early around these parts, but a quick update for those of you still up and reading this –

Kendall has been showing signs of her usual “NQR” status (not quite right) for about a week now – things like spiking a slight fever out of the blue, having high HR’s, breathing too fast (being tachypnic), having really weird (meaning super gross smelling) urine output, and in general just being “off”. By Monday i was starting to think we might be dealing with another UTI (thats what she was inpatient for last month in milwaukee), by Tuesday i knew we were more than likely headed that direction, and then this morning I finally made the call to call the ped’s office, knowing they would want to catheterize her for a culture.

Sure enough, we get there at 12:30 and they IMMEDIATELY take us back to the treatment room to get her labs drawn/cathed urine collected and hand delivered to the lab for a stat reading. I wasn’t really honestly TOO worried about kendall until dr. natalie tells me that she is pretty worried for her based on how bad she looks, and that we need a GOOD plan and we need it SOON. Knowing that we are fighting against the bacteria overgrowth in kendall’s gut, we needed to find out from Dr. Noe in milwaukee what his recommendation was for starting the ampho (antibiotic to kill bad gut bacteria), as well as anything else related to oral abx. We needed to figure out if we should have a PICC line placed for longer term antibiotic therapy, and if so, where? It was a long afternoon of waiting, running around, waiting some more, and then fighting traffic, but here we are.

Home away from home, 2Center at Lutheran General.

The HOPE is that she will get started on IV antibiotics here, they will run a few more kidney specific tests to figure out WHY she is either fighting the same UTI from last month, or has a whole new one, and hopefully she will have a PICC placed when they run any tests that need sedation. The PICC will allow her to be discharged to home quicker (vs staying inpatient for ten days for a full course of antibiotics), as well as be able to address whatever crazy thing is going on with her fluids, kidneys, bladder, etc. As of right now we are not on the surgery schedule for first thing in the morning (and i say this only because no one has come in to take kendall NPO, switch her to IV fluids only, or tell me she is having surgery in the morning!) – so i HOPE that someone gets their act together overnite and we are still scheduled for a quick placement at some point tomorrow so that we can have home nursing set up and waiting for us and POSSIBLY get out of here tomorrow nite, or barring that, friday morning sometime.

We just have way too much going on this weekend to wait around for bureaucratic orders to be followed and written!

So that is what is going on in a nutshell.

She is responding nicely to the first two doses of antibiotic she has gotten – that is encouraging. She is finally sleeping, although she keeps crying out in pain and having a subsequent rise in HR and drop in O2 sats with that. I just want a plan to be magically put into place overnite….

sorry this is so discombobulated – i’ll hopefully have a more coherent post in the morning!